How do You Spell Your Name?

In the striving to remember I forget. What occurs to me now? Not her face, but her feet. This is how it was: she sat behind me on the edge of my bed, kneeling behind me, not quite square-on. She started massaging my shoulders in a fussy way that was anything but what a massage was supposed to be. She told me to take off my shirt and I did. Then she moved square behind me, wrapped her bare legs around my waist and started massaging again, not quite in the same way, a little slower - anyway I liked it. I leaned forward and tried to take off her plimsolls. She shifted slightly. No, my feet are smelly, she said. I don't care, I said.
I unlaced her plimsolls while she massaged my shoulders and my neck. In a drunken plunge, she started sucking my ear. I was drunk so smiled and laughed. I took off her plimsolls and grabbed her feet, running my thumbs over the soles. I smelled my thumbs. She did have smelly feet. I told her it didn't matter because it didn't and we kissed.
I wish I could remember more. I record this here, now, because of how good it made me feel. Sort of foreveryoung, untouchable and... ah, what crap.
I liked her unusual posh voice and the vanishing, dissolving thing that happened when she smiled. It was as if she were not quite there. She never looked at me. When she smiled she lost focus. There are things I forget about her, little idiosyncracies, and I'm really annoyed about that. Actually, what really annoys me is that she is not here with me now, smelling of jam and peaches and unfresh feet, the way I remember her.

Well, What Next?

Well, what next? I'm always asking myself this

Failing to find what the answer is

Till I’m staring at the frozen clock

In some dream-corroding office block

Then, the bird in me falls from its sky

The whale, confused, is suddenly beached

Reluctantly a truth is reached:

Without a plan you’re high and dry
A deadweight sinking through the days

But living just once it’s hard to say 
What's the best way forward, and why

Names to Call Becky When I See Her

a bleb
a spunky klenge
a klend
an astounding animal
a shitey bastard
a gigacunt
a whoring cocking cock
a sperm drinker
a mong flapper
a bastarding fuckpot
a spong clamfer
an anus dribbler
a raping naughty cunt
a quilly wong cocker
a pissy quammer
a blooty kwam
a cocking fatty
a watery fuble sniffer
a buggering bollocky twatty fuck
an arse flaming whore
a warm titty cheeks
a spaagle

a speng

twat hands

In progress...

In the dark old pub in front of the fire. Flames leap to their annihilation. Walls of bare red brick, carpet of blue tartan, old-pub wood everywhere. Not a soul but me. Enjoying my last day here. Or maybe there'll be one more, if they allow it. It's quiet save the clugging of the pendulum in the grand-dad clock. Dusty glass face. Grime of years' gathering. Except for this, silence. Noble silence of the coffered snug. I sip my whisky, I hear the clock clug and sigh away from myself. Not too far, but far enough for the naming of things to become an irrelevance. Nothing quantifiable now, save the clug. I don't care. Clothes I've made of this quiet. The chair creaks under my weight. I sip my whisky. This the last day.
All that old misery. But once wasn't enough for you.

Memory: I remember the atmosphere of Christmas in my house. On this one occasion in the year, symbols of plenitude everywhere. Mum would buy both the Radio Times and the TV Times. As thick as catalogues, brimful of televisual enchantments to see us through until January. Mum forever in the kitchen boiling vegetables or checking the chicken or preparing a between-meals treat for us; dad idle and farting in the armchair, 'topping up' on his favourite Quality Streets. Never the coffee creams. Say the words and watch him wince. Mum would start buying goodies for Christmas in September, dowsing for bargains in Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, Pioneer, Netto. Even Marks and Spencers. By Christmas Eve the cupboards were spilling with provisions. It seemed impossible, to think we could get through all of it.
Always that reflexive holding of breath, knowing it would all be over soon. The sad bare walls after the decorations were pulled down.
But it would last long enough for us to feel the glut. The rich, cloying belly glut. The telly trance. Delicious Christmas torpor going on for days and days.
- Who remembers the war?
- Which war?
- Oh, I don't know, all of 'em.
- No one remembers all of 'em.
- No one remembers any of 'em.
- Don't be silly, 'course they do. The second world war.
- I'm telling you: Nothing. Is. Remembered.

The Drunk

I noticed the drunk from a long way down the road. He was hard to miss: a huge, wide-shouldered horror of a man wailing gibberish at passers-by and thrashing his gibbon-like arms about. In his left hand he clasped an unopened can of Stella.
I walked towards him and watched him as he thrashed and wailed. He started pointing at the sky, now at the wall, now at an invisible thing in front of him. He wasn't getting a response. A young couple arm-in arm in front of me crossed the road to avoid him. I kept walking. I could have crossed the road. I could have followed the young couple and sought safety in numbers. I suppose I didn't want to think of myself as a coward.
But the size of the man, and that desperate wailing voice. I was shit-scared. I'd read in the paper about a man  who walked into a supermarket with a huge knife and stabbed an innocent shopper to death, then beheaded her, right there in the frozen food aisle, and casually walked off with the head. But I walked straight towards him anyway, just as he was serenading a lamp-post. The sound he was making was horrible, all phlegmy vowels and drool.
He wore a battered baseball cap, under the shade of which his battered bristled head oozed sorrow, madness and booze vapour. As I tiptoed towards to him I saw that a yellow crust had formed at the corners of his mouth. I noticed the caried black ruins of his teeth. He turned from the lamp-post and looked at me. I was within attack radius. I saw the young couple look over their shoulders as they turned the corner of the street and carried on with their charmed lives.
The drunk opened the can of Stella. He used the abhorrence of his mouth to suck up the explosion of foam. Instantly he puked up the foam which, after travelling the considerable distance from his head to his feet, splashed all over the pavement. He gulped more lager. He retched, but managed to keep it down.
'Iss juss bou' money inni?' he said.
'Sorry.' I said.
''Money ere, money there. Ere's yer money, 'ave some money. Money, money. Thass it. Thass woss all bout. Money an gettin pissed.'
He took another slurp of Stella.
"I wizh I was inna BNP but I can't cozz I 'ate myself."
I tried to insinuate myself past him as he spoke, but he stumbled sideways and blocked my path. He looked at me with a look that, even though he was out of his mind, I could identify as disdain.
"Ahnggh agn huh," he said. "Am I your mum? Am I your dad?"
"No you're not," I said.
"Ah your jussz hippy, thas all. Don worry, I won 'urt yer. Am an 'ippy zwell. We all are." He finished off his can and threw it into the road. A passing car sounded its horn.
"Ey, ey, fuck off you cunt, you fucking cunt, al kill yer fuckin cunt," the drunk bellowed. He scrambled up the lamp-post and started screaming that combination of vowels and drool again. I saw my chance and started to walk on, but I heard him hit the floor and start running to catch me. My heart stopped for a couple of seconds.
When he'd caught up to me he vomited again. Just a little bit this time. "Do you wanna drink?" he asked.
I said no. And suddenly it was my turn to feel disdain.
Stupid people really should keep their mouths shut, I thought. Listen to this big arsehole trying to say something profound, pretending to wisdom. At least if you'd beaten me up it would have been something pure, something you were good at. I looked into his eyes as I thought all this.
The atmosphere had changed. As he swayed in front of me now it was as if he were swaying on a blade's edge, preliminary to an abysmal fall. But he had more. He had been building up to it. Looking as earnest as its possible for a sub-normally intelligent, paranoid schizophrenic, wet-brained alcoholic who has never been loved by anyone and who has been on a 72-hour amphetamine binge, to look, he put his hand on my shoulder and said: "I am Jesus for a day. Call yer mum an yer dad. Tell 'em that yer okay. They neeto know yer okay. Don' forget you 'ave a choice." Then he turned round and walked away, holding his gibbon-like arms aloft, making the sign of the devil's horns.

My Father...

- I just wish we could get him out of that home.
- I don't think that'll happen this late in the day though, do you? There's so little room here...
- (Sigh) I suppose not. He wouldn't budge anyway, bless him. Just too proud.
- No, he won't be moving anywhere. But he's not going to be around for much longer, is he?
- Oh Jerry, don't say that! Don't be so morbid!
- I'm being perfectly rational, darling. There's no hiding from the fact that he's a very old man. He's lived a long and pleasant life, but he's over 80 now, and all I'm saying is that his domestic comfort won't be an issue for much longer.
-You're a cold human being sometimes, Jerry, you really are. My father...
- Darling, I really don't mean to upset you, but I don't think it does anyone any favours to avoid speaking about these things frankly and honestly. We're adults, and if we haven't come to terms with our own mortality at this advanced stage then...
- Then what?
- Then...
- Then there must be something wrong with us, is that what you were going to say, Jerry? Is that what you think? Just because someone doesn't like to talk about an unhappy subject like that they're not right in the head, is that it?
- Marjorie...
- Sometimes I hate you, Jerry

Carol

It happened yesterday. Spring sprung. A million sad souls untied their nooses after another vitiating struggle through the bastardy of winter. I took this opportunity to go for a long walk, without my coat.
While I was out, gawping at houses and shop fronts, listening to the cruel sounds of the streets, I walked by an oldish woman who stopped me and, without even looking at me, asked if I knew what time it was.
She was dressed in frayed, faded jeans and a powder pink puffer jacket, which had tea-coloured stains all over one arm. Something big and angular was bulging from under the jacket. I couldn't tell what it was. Her face was sickly white, waxy with sebum, and was framed by curtains of lank black hair. I could not help but notice the galaxy of blackheads that studded her nose, but even more unignorable were her lips which, though thin and depressing in themselves, were thickly coated with fuschia-pink lipstick. This had smudged at the corners of the mouth, giving her the look of someone who'd never applied lipstick before in her life.
'It's 3 o'clock,' I told her. She looked at me with the bright unseeing eyes of a heavily medicated woman.
'What are you doing?' she asked.
'I'm out for a walk,' I said.
'Are you?' she said, her eyes flashing.
I looked at her livid white face and tried to smile. I was happy she had stopped to talk to me. This was the sort of encounter I daydreamed about as I wandered the streets gawping at houses and shop fronts. Sometimes it happened. I seemed to attract these vague and insane characters. They often found me as I wandered, and bled a little pathos out of me, for which I was always grateful.
'I've just had a massive operation,' she said. 'Have you ever had an operation?'
'Erm... no I...' I muttered.
'I'm okay now though. Do you drive?' she asked.
'Yes I do,'
'Do you? Oh I wish I could drive. My son drives but he lives a long way away. Chester or something. Where's that? Oh it doesn't matter though. What's your name?'
'Darren.'
'I'm Carol,' she said. She offered a limp cadaver-smooth hand. I shook it.
'Nice to meet you,' she said and smiled, revealing a brown-stained rubble of denture. I smiled back.
'They're setting up the circus near to my house,' she said.
'The circus?' I said.
'Yeah, they're setting it up today. It's right next to my house, in Carter's Field. They come round every year, it's lovely, all them rides and colours and all that. I'll show you it if you want.'
'I don't think I can. I'm quite busy,' I lied.
There was a pause, which I broke by asking, 'What time are they setting up?'.
She thought about it. '12 o'clock,' she said.
'What, midnight?'
There was another pause.
'Eight o'clock then,' she said. 'Will you come? I live next to the New Inn. Do you know Carter's Fields? It's where all the gypsies live.'
'Yes I know it,' I said.
'Will you come then?'
'I will if I have time.'
'You can come to my house if you want.' She smiled. Her smudged lipstick made her look fucking awful.
'Well I'm not sure about that. I don't know you, do I? But I might come to see the circus being put up. What about that?'
'Yeah okay. And you can come to my house after. I'll wait for you. At 12 o'clock.'
'Eight o'clock, you mean.'
'Yeah... ah you're really nice you,' she said.
'So are you,' I replied. 'Nice to meet you. I've got to go now. Bye Carol.'
'Yeah, see you tonight.'